On line for a phone call to the future

By PETER GRIFFIN

CANNES - It is best known for its film festival, but the French city of Cannes was this week abuzz with optimism from a mobile phone industry out to push its next big technology - 3G.

Third generation mobile services have been over-hyped for a long time, but this year's 3GSM summit features for the first time, a wide range of functioning 3G phones. Mobile 3G networks being built around the world boast faster connection speeds and network capacity allowing slick features such as phone-to-phone video conferencing, music and movie clip downloading and high-speed web surfing.

Generally bulkier than their "2.5G" counterparts, the new generation 3G phones are starting to allay the concerns of mobile operators who have blamed the often poor take-up of their fledgling 3G services on the lack of stylish handsets.

Europe's leading operators came out swinging in Cannes to blame handset makers for dragging the chain on delivering devices that people want to buy.

"[3G phones] are bulky, they get hot, they don't have battery life," Vodafone's chief executive, Arun Sarin, told the congress.

"The experience today is unacceptable to our customers."

But for most people, New Zealanders in particular, it's a case of 3G buzz everywhere but not a network to connect to.

Vodafone and TelstraClear have said they plan to build 3G networks locally, but services are unlikely to arrive until well into next year.

In the meantime the plain old GSM (the mobile phone standard used by Vodafone) world of mobile has plenty to keep us occupied.

The other big trends from the summit include the building of "wi-fi" connectivity into mobile phones and dual GPRS/Wi-Fi data cards.

Wi-fi is wireless standard that uses "public park" radio spectrum to provide internet access, and GPRS is the 2.5G standard used by Vodafone in New Zealand for its mobile data network.

Microsoft's presence in the mobile world was more obvious than ever.

Smartphone and handheld computer makers increasingly feature a cut-down version of Windows on their devices.

And 2004 becomes the year in which it is unusual to see a mobile phone sold without a good-quality camera built-in.

Here are some of the mobile gadgets featured at Cannes.

Philips

Niche mobile phone maker Philips was looking to make its phones more attractive by making them entertainment devices.

The Philips 855 can be bought with a TVLink connection which, when plugged into a TV through a standard input, creates a TV slide show of photos stored on the phone.

The 7MB of memory included with TV Link can hold up to 1000 low-resolution photos that nevertheless look reasonably good displayed full size on the TV screen.

The 855 and TV Link will go on sale together within a few months for less than €500 ($909).

Other Philips models - the 759, 755 and 550 - feature Tag-It, used to attach handwritten messages and drawings to photos taken on the phone's digital camera.

Another feature, BeDJ, turns the phone into a music-mixing device.

Motorola

US mobile maker Motorola unveiled the stylish V80, a phone that folds in on itself, is Bluetooth-enabled for connecting wirelessly to other devices, can play back video at 15 frames a second and has the obligatory built-in camera.

It also features "rhythm lights" which flash in time with ambient sound - perfect for lighting up the dancefloor at a nightclub.

It will be available from May.

More innovative is the MPX, a computer-cum-phone based on Microsoft's operating system.

It has built-in wi-fi and GPRS so users can connect to the internet at wireless hotspots and through the cellular network.

It also has an extensive keyboard, a 1.3 megapixel camera and full HTML web browser, and will go on sale in the second half of the year.

Nokia

Nokia finally delivered a decent update of the Nokia Communicator, improving immensely on the 9210i. It is aimed at professional users, featuring built-in wi-fi and a version of GPRS allowing connection speeds of up to 300Kbps, making it compatible with many of the European "edge" networks that have launched.

Edge is seen as a stepping stone from standard GSM phones to 3G handsets.

The new Communicator has removable covers, an impressive camera, a 65,000-colour screen and 90MB of memory. It will be on sale by Christmas.

IP Wireless

New Zealand's Woosh Wireless lured crowds at Cannes as it presented the technology from US company IP Wireless it is using to deliver high-speed internet services in parts of Auckland and Southland.

Shown publicly for the first time was a PC card version of the IP wireless modems that have so far been sold as comparatively bulky stand-alone units in New Zealand.

Panasonic

Japanese mobile company Panasonic was pushing the X700, one of the first mobiles to include a slot for mini-SD storage cards.

A 128MB mini-SD card is selling for around US$80 ($116) in Japanese electronics stores, and a 4GB full-sized SD card will be available by the end of the year.

Samsung showcased 4GB and 8GB compact flash cards. The 8GB card is nearly a quarter the size of the average computer hard drive - on a card weighing about 40 grams.

In the "mobile concepts" department, Panasonic impressed with the "holographic viewer phone".

The phone is being designed to interact with a ring and a bracelet for viewing calling details, pictures or emails on pieces of jewellery.

But it is unclear yet whether it will ever leave Panasonic's labs.

It also showed its flagship 3G handset, the P900i, which has a camera for capturing video and making videophone calls to other 3G users.

Microsoft

Well-established in the handheld computer market through its Pocket PC version of Windows in devices from Hewlett Packard and Toshiba, Microsoft has well and truly gone mobile.

Other smartphones running on cut-down versions of Windows included Motorola's MPX200, the Samsung i600, the peculiarly shaped Sierra Wireless Voq "professional phone", and the slick XDA 2, which adds a camera. Microsoft-based smartphones have been slow to come to New Zealand, but their ability to integrate the applications of Windows in the mobile world will make them formidable competitors to existing mobile operating environments such as the Sony Ericsson-backed Symbian.

* Peter Griffin attended the 3GSM summit as a guest of Ericsson.